There is a tradition that Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) visited at Coniston Hall. There used to be an old book with his name in it and "Fulke Greville is a good boy" scribbled in an antique hand on a fly-leaf. It is probable that Squire William, the "gentleman of great pomp," invited many visitors, especially young men of distinction, for hunting parties in his deer park; and Sidney is said to have stayed at Brougham Castle, so that he may well have been, once in a while, in the Lake District.
Dr. Gibson tells a legend, which he says he collected at Coniston, of Girt Will o' t' Tarns--"one of the Troutbeck giants." (Hugh Hird, the chief of them, flourished in this period.) Girt Will is represented as carrying off "the Lady Eva's" bowermaiden, and being caught and killed at Caldron Dub on Yewdale Beck (a little above the sawmills), where his grave was shown, still haunted, they said. There is no "Lady Eva" in the records, but (allowing for distortion) there may be a grain of truth in the story, if it really was a tradition.
Squire John lived at Coniston. He was twenty-three at his father's death. His first wife was Alice Duckett of Grayrigg (died 1617); his second, the widow of Sir Thomas Bold, and daughter of Sir William Norris of Speke, the famous old timbered hall near Liverpool. She died at Coniston Hall, and was buried in Coniston Church, which Squire William had built. His third was Dorothy Strickland of Sizergh, for whose sake he became a Roman Catholic at a time when Roman Catholics were persecuted; and consequently, after being J.P. and High Sheriff, he was heavily fined, and had to get a special licence to travel five miles from home. He had a turn for literature; we find in the Rydal letters one enclosing the latest playbook and (Massinger's new work) the _Virgin Martir_.
His son William was only fourteen at his father's death in 1643, and soon afterwards died of smallpox in London. Consequently the Hall went to his cousin William (son of the Daniel before mentioned), born there in 1610, and educated at St. John's College, Cambridge. He was one of Charles I.'s cavaliers, and suffered severely in pocket for his loyalty. He married Alice Kirkby in 1632, and died at the hall in 1653.